by Rory Black
Most men in his condition would have looked at the water with joy in their souls. They would have drunk their fill and said prayers of thanks, but not the emaciated figure, All Iron Eyes could see was an obstacle.
‘Damn it all!’ he cursed. He screwed up his eyes against the bright reflection of the overhead sun, which dazzled him.
Iron Eyes pulled the guns from his pants belt and looked at them. The blood had covered both Navy Colts. He staggered unsteadily to the water’s edge and forced himself to kneel down. He carefully washed the blood from the blue steel weapons and dropped them into the deep pocket of his trail-coat. The sound of the loose bullets filled his ears as the guns found the bottom of the deep pocket. He scooped water into the cupped palms of his hands and splashed it over his head several times. The cold liquid felt fine. He then splashed more over the bandages. It did not help or ease the pain. Then he looked around him, trying to work out where he ought to head from here.
To his left there was a lush valley shielded from the searing rays of the sun by the high sand-colored rock walls. To his right there was nothing but more of the same type of arid terrain of which he had already had his bellyful.
The choice was simple.
He gave another deep sigh. A troublesome thought occurred to Iron Eyes. He seemed to be having trouble filling his lungs since he had set out on this long trek. His fingers pushed the ribs back into his pitifully thin frame again. He winced.
‘I need strapping up tighter than ever,’ he muttered to himself before forcing his weary frame up off the ground. This time he did not reach his full height. It was as though someone was standing upon his shoulders.
Someone damned heavy.
He looked up to where the green vegetation started. There were an awful lot of trees there, he told himself. Trees gave shade. He glanced at his hands. The skin was blistered by the unceasing rays of the sun. He ran the fingers of his right hand through his long hair.
It was wet with sweat and creek water. He shook his head like a hound dog after stepping in from the rain.
‘Reckon there might just be someone up yonder with a horse I can buy,’ Iron Eyes said as he began to walk towards the fertile valley. ‘Or steal.’
For the first time in a long time, Iron Eyes felt the sharp drop in temperature as he staggered beneath the shade of a huge well-nourished tree close to the water’s edge. It felt good.
He had ventured less than a mile into the cool wood when he heard something which managed to cut through his weariness. It was a familiar sound. It was the sound of a snorting, galloping horse being ridden on the other side of the creek.
Iron Eyes pushed through the brush between the tree-trunks until he had an uninterrupted view of the fast-flowing water and beyond. He pressed a hand against the rough bark of the nearest tree and rested against it.
He could hear the rider and horse approaching but could not see them. Iron Eyes shook his head. His mind filled with images of all the Apaches he had confronted over the years. They had seemed to dislike him even more than he hated them. Again he pushed his ribs back inside his flesh.
Could this place be filled with Indians?
The thought chilled him to the bone. He knew that he was not fighting fit. There was no chance he would win an encounter with Indians. A bead of sweat trailed down his scarred features and dripped from his chin.
Iron Eyes gritted his sharp teeth. His bony fingers went to his shirt. They searched and then found what they were looking for. He pulled a thin cigar remnant from his shirt pocket. It was twisted and stained with blood, but he did not care. He pushed it between his teeth and then found a match and ran a thumbnail across it.
He raised its flame to the end of the cigar and dragged in the smoke as deep as it would go. He closed his eyes for a few seconds and then allowed the smoke to drift from his lips. He tossed the match into the creek, screwed up his eyes and focused across the water.
Instinctively his right hand pulled one of his Navy Colts from his coat pocket. His thumb dragged back the gun’s hammer until it locked fully into position.
Iron Eyes leaned against the tree and held the gun at hip level. He strained to hear. He closed his eyes and tried to picture what his ears were telling him.
‘Think!’ he snarled at himself.
It was a single rider, his ears told him.
He nodded to himself. It was also a big horse. It was not a small agile pony.
Whoever was riding along the valley, it was no Indian.
‘C’mon, pard,’ Iron Eyes whispered through a cloud of acrid smoke. ‘I’m ready for you.’
Chapter Five
TO THE RELIEF of the weary bounty hunter the approaching horseman was indeed alone, as he had suspected. The vaquero had ridden thirty miles to this place. Twenty with his fellow vaqueros in search of more trespassers within the domain of Don Miguel Sanchez. The others had parted company with Sanchez’s top vaquero more than ten miles back and were scouring the dense fertile land to either side of the creek whilst the solitary rider had made his way to the very end of the unnamed valley.
Pedro Ruiz was a proud, confident man who thought a lot of himself and little of others. It was a trait which would soon send him on a journey to purgatory.
Iron Eyes squinted through the bright sunlight across the dazzling water at the rider who sat astride his tall palomino stallion. The weary bounty hunter did not yet know that he was one of the many vaqueros who worked for Don Miguel Sanchez and had been sent out on a deadly mission to hunt down and kill all those who had strayed into the valley.
Without ever questioning his master, Ruiz had willingly carried out his deadly instructions many times since he had started working for the mysterious Sanchez. Even amongst his fellow vaqueros, Ruiz was regarded as the most brutal and deadly of them all.
Yet Ruiz had never encountered anyone like the man who secretly watched his every move. Iron Eyes gripped his gun firmly in his hand and studied the well-dressed rider carefully. He saw nothing to be afraid of. He had encountered many vaqueros over the years he had ridden along the border. But none had been quite as well-adorned as this one. The black sombrero with its silver stitching was perched upon his head with only its colorful drawstring preventing it from falling on to the back of the blue, well-tailored jacket.
For all his finery, Ruiz aroused no fear in the onlooker.
The vaquero’s ivory gun-grip gleamed in the sunlight as Ruiz drew rein and stopped his mount.
Iron Eyes had never had any trouble with vaqueros and did not imagine that this one would be any different. He relaxed and lowered his Navy Colt before stepping out from the cover of the trees and undergrowth. The lean figure saw nothing to be afraid of in this fancy horseman. Iron Eyes staggered out into the open towards the creek. He began walking towards Ruiz through the shallow fast-moving water.
It was a mistake.
‘Hey!’ Iron Eyes called out above the sound of flowing water. ‘You speak American, amigo?’
The Mexican swung around on his saddle and glared at the brutalized vision which approached. Ruiz’s eyes widened. The blood-soaked man who had started to wade through the creek was unlike anything he had ever set eyes upon before. Not even in his worst nightmares had he seen such an apparition. With the long mane of black hair hanging limply over his scarred face Iron Eyes looked even more fearsome than normal. The startled Ruiz steadied his stallion and in one swift, well-oiled movement pulled the gun from its ornate holster. Then a torrent of words flew back at Iron Eyes in a tongue the wounded man recognized but could not understand.
The hunter of men stopped.
His eyes burned at the man’s hand and the gun it had drawn clear of the holster.
Then, to his utter surprise, Iron Eyes saw the gun being raised and levelled at him. His keen eyesight focused on the thumb as it started to pull back the hammer.
‘I wouldn’t do that if I was you!’ the bounty hunter warned the vaquero loudly.
The sound of the hammer cl
icking filled his ears.
Now there was no more time for words.
There would be no more warnings.
Iron Eyes swung his arm upward. His index finger squeezed the Navy Colt’s trigger at the same moment as the horseman duplicated the action.
Two deafening blasts. Two spirited bullets cut across the creek water in both directions.
Iron Eyes felt the heat of the lead ball as it passed within inches of his ear. His long hair kicked up as the red-hot bullet lifted the side of his long, damp mane.
Then he narrowed his eyes. His thumb dragged the hammer back again. He was about to fire once more but there was no call. Iron Eyes watched the stallion spin around as its master was jerked violently backwards. A trail of blood droplets flew into the morning air like crimson petals. The high cantle of the saddle had prevented the vaquero from being knocked backwards from his high perch but the bounty hunter knew his aim had somehow been deadly.
Now the magnificent palomino had a corpse for a rider.
The tall skeletal figure waded through the water towards the horse and its lifeless cargo. The horse was terrified of what it saw and smelled. For the memories of death hung on every inch of the bounty hunter. The stallion flared its nostrils. It went to rear up but Iron Eyes was too close. His bony hand grabbed at its reins and held the palomino in check.
It took every scrap of his dwindling energy but the bounty hunter would not allow a mere horse, however big it was, to defeat him.
After a few moments the animal was subdued and stopped its fighting. Iron Eyes held on to the reins and then staggered a couple of steps to the leg of the dead vaquero propped between the horn and cantle of the well-crafted saddle. Iron Eyes pulled the rider’s boot from the nearest stirrup and then heaved the leg upward. He watched as the body tumbled off the back of the stallion.
The Mexican landed on the damp soil like a rag doll.
‘It don’t pay to shoot at Iron Eyes, boy.’ The words were spat at the body with bitter contempt. He had no idea why the rider had decided to shoot at him and really did not care. It had proved profitable.
Now the blood-soaked bounty hunter had a new horse. He had attained half of what he desired. Iron Eyes dropped his gun back into the deep trail-coat pocket and then used his fingers to release the bags from behind the saddle. He pulled them towards him and heard the sound of liquid in one of its satchels.
A smile etched across the face of the half-dead man.
He quickly unbuckled the swollen bag, pushed his bony hand inside and then found the thing he desired. He pulled the bottle of pale-yellow mezcal free and stared at it.
‘Well, it ain’t whiskey but it’s liquor and that’s all that counts,’ Iron Eyes said as he studied it. ‘If Mexicans can drink this stuff, then so can I.’
It was two-thirds full and had a worm in it.
‘Damn it all,’ Iron Eyes muttered to himself wryly. ‘Why’d these heathen varmints wanna put a bug in good liquor for? Still, I reckon my belly could use a little grub.’
He yanked the cork with his teeth and spat it away. He would not need it again. Iron Eyes lifted the bottle and placed its neck to his cracked lips. He started to drink and did not stop until there were only fumes remaining inside the clear glass. Even the worm was consumed.
Iron Eyes threw the bottle away and searched the rest of the vaquero’s bags more thoroughly. He pulled out a box of small black cigars and filled his pockets with them. Then he pulled his own saddlebags off his bony shoulder and tossed them across the neck of the palomino.
Gripping the saddle horn he raised his left leg until his boot toe found the stirrup. The mezcal had given him renewed strength. He pulled himself up on to the saddle and then swung the horse around.
The palomino tried to fight but it was useless.
The bounty hunter had never possessed such a huge mount before, let alone ridden one. It must have been twice the size of the ponies he was used to riding. He sat in the bloody saddle and looked all around him silently. Iron Eyes had never been so high off the ground before when mounted. It was an experience he liked. He could not believe how far he was able to see from his high vantage point.
‘Reckon I better look after you a tad better than I done with my last few animals,’ Iron Eyes said to the mighty stallion beneath him. ‘You could be worth your weight in gold if n you can run as fast as them muscles of yours say.’
Again he looked down at the ribs which poked out from his flesh. There was no hiding from the fact that it was a severe injury.
But Iron Eyes ignored it. He placed one of the new cigars between his lips and struck a match across the saddle horn. He inhaled the smoke and let it linger in his lungs for a while before blowing it at the sky. Between the liquor and the cigar smoke, the pain seemed to ease.
‘Reckon we oughta go take us a look upstream, boy,’ Iron Eyes told the horse through a cloud of grey smoke.
With a skill to equal any vaquero, Iron Eyes expertly turned the stallion and aimed its nose at the valley, where he imagined he might find someone who could tend his busted ribs and stop his bleeding.
It was time to show the powerful creature he sat astride who was the boss.
He thrust his spurs into the flesh of the palomino hard and held on to the reins firmly. The animal gave out a stunned whinny of protest. Ruiz had never drawn the blood of his noble steed but Iron Eyes had already done so. The horse suddenly realized that not all riders were the same.
Desperately the stallion tried to unseat the bounty hunter by rearing up and kicking out at the air but Iron Eyes was not to be bucked. The high cantle and saddle horn held the thin figure firmly between them. In the end the stallion understood it would never defeat this ghostly horseman. It gave up the fight. Iron Eyes steadied the stallion, then dragged the reins hard to his right before driving his sharp spurs into the palomino once again. This time the animal obeyed its new owner and thundered away from the corpse which only minutes earlier had been its master.
Now it had a new master.
The wide-eyed creature had already learned the difference.
Chapter Six
IT WAS DUSK and the large man knew that total darkness would come within the hour not only to his but also his neighbors small dirt farms. Yet as Dan Landon moved between the trees a few dozen yards from his well-hidden cabin the memory of the two gunshots he had heard on the afternoon air remained branded into his troubled mind. It had been almost a month since he had heard gunfire and that had brought death to the majority of the other settlers along the valley. Landon rested his muscular right shoulder against a tree-trunk and stared out into the dense woods as the sun’s last rays filtered through the tree canopies.
The wood was his family’s only shield from the forces of evil which he knew might return at any time. The thought chilled his mighty frame.
The sound of two shots had stopped the songbirds that afternoon. Landon wondered what else had been silenced, away in the distance.
Who had fired those shots? he asked himself.
Had it been the vaqueros?
The question had haunted Landon for hours although he had not mentioned a word of his concern either to his wife or to his young son. Every sinew in his body told him that if it had been the vaqueros they must have found new prey further along the valley. He knew that his neighbors were safe as their small farms were in the opposite direction from where the shots had emanated.
But Landon was also well aware that the long valley could play tricks to a man’s senses. He knew that the trees and high rock walls to either side of the creek had a way of twisting sounds. Some called it echoes but Landon had another word for it.
Trickery.
He had read his Bible many times and knew that if this was a kind of Eden, then there had to be many serpents within its vast confines. Not the sidewinder variety but the two-legged sort who would do anything to trick the few remaining families who had not yet been driven out.
Perhaps the man known as Sanche
z had instructed his men to try and frighten those they could not catch. Firing blind shots could cause game to flee from their hiding-places and be trapped and killed. The same might be said of men. They could be scared out into the open and into the gun sights of those who hunted them.
Landon had never required a gun like so many of his age in the West. He had never even learned how to use one, but since he had brought his wife and child to this place he wished he had something with which he could keep the vaqueros at bay.
He looked down at his powerful arms.
No shirt had ever been able to contain them without bursting stitches. The low sun was now behind the high rock walls and an eerie glow filled the valley all around him.
He sighed.
Landon had seen the strange eerie light many times in the last year but it had never troubled him before. This was one night when he actually feared the coming of darkness.
Who was it who had fired those two shots?
And why?
A thousand answers sped their way through his mind. None of them made any sense. For he had no way of knowing for sure for who, or why, those two shots had been unleashed.
But he wanted to know.
He wanted to know so badly his guts hurt.
Perhaps the vaqueros had decided to try something different this time in their quest to track down the people who trespassed in the beautiful fertile valley, Landon told himself.
Maybe they had ridden to the very end of the valley where the desert started and were now sweeping the woods to both sides of the creek in one last attempt to find the last of the settlers and destroy them.
Dan Landon raised both his large hands and rubbed his eyes in a vain effort to wipe his fear away with the sweat. Again he inhaled deeply and tried to remain strong.
Then he heard something some yards away from where he stood beside the tree.
It was the breaking of twigs.
Then he heard the sound of a horse snorting.
There was no mistaking what it was. A rider was headed straight towards him and his cabin, he told himself silently. His heart began to race.
